Welcome to On Vocation – a blog from The Wheaton Center for Faith & Innovation, just for staff and faculty of Wheaton College.
We know many of our students struggle with the concept of vocation—but it’s such a big, complicated subject, and we’re all so pressed for time! In On Vocation you’ll find concise, yet substantial pieces of vocational wisdom curated from our program materials, interviews with colleagues, media clips and more.
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In this interview with Drs. Sarah Borden and Greg Lee, we explore Augustine’s personal vocational path in Confessions, this year’s Core Book, and draw out insights for our own work with students.
Ben Norquist, the CFI Managing Director, interviewed the Student Care and Services Team recently about the relationship between students’ health and their vocational formation.
A level of uncertainty is often felt by college students and their parents when thinking about the future of work, and it isn't just a general fear of change--they wonder about the stability of the future they are working so hard to achieve.
"What job/career/occupation does God want me to have?" It's a fair question, and an important one if you're in the high-pressure process of looking for a job.
Grant Hensel '15 is from Chicago and studied business/economics at Wheaton College. Grant is the founder and CEO of the RoundUp App. In this MyWheaton blog post, Grant reflects on his experience this past summer as an Emerging Founder with Praxis.
Dorothy L. Sayers was so passionate about vocation that her friend C. S. Lewis once wrote her “Hey! Whoa!” in response. Her galloping commitment to “Christian work” – which for her potentially included all work – developed out of life experiences.
This edition of On Vocation takes us to the intersection of spiritual formation and vocation, highlighting a significant finding in the College’s recent alumni survey and peeking under the hood of Opus’s Staff & Faculty Vocation Seminar.
Opus Director Chris Armstrong makes the case for the critical importance of seeing calling as plural rather than singular—we all have multiple callings at any given time, and they change over time.
This issue features a chapel talk video on "why students should not follow their passions" along with a short summary and reflection questions. The talk was given in October 2016 by Bethany Jenkins from Kings College.
"It takes a college" to form a student vocationally, and it helps if we work from a common language and narrative about vocation. For a peek into Opus's common vocational language, look at this handy table and brief narrative.
What do the classic spiritual disciplines have to do with students becoming the sorts of people who will work hard and well to help others flourish? And how can we - their teachers and mentors - help them in the process?
Amy Sherman, Senior Fellow at the Sagamore Institute for Policy Research, spoke eloquently on “Vocational Faithfulness as Public Discipleship” at the second biennial Faith@Work Summit.